The End is Nigh
by zrose
Summary: Not your usual Rorschach gets thrown into the future fic. Actually, he's in another dimension. Nothing is right, and it probably never will be, but who knows? This is New York, anything can happen.


(Author's note:

Dear fans,

I am about to mutilate your fandom and put it through worse torture than what it has been through before. I am sorry.)

"Do it!" screamed Rorschach.

Dr. Manhattan raised his hand, and in a flash of light, the vigilante was gone. Nothing remained of his existence. Not even a mark on the pristine white snow to prove he had ever existed.

"No!" howled Dan in pitiful despair. "You killed him!"

"I did not do anything," replied Dr. Manhattan in his usual even monotone.

"Oh, don't give me that whole 'you can't fight fate' crap. You killed him!" He collapsed into a sob.

"Actually, I did not do anything at all."

Rorschach felt a blinding white pain, and fell to the ground. Of course he was in pain, he was dying, wasn't he? He thought that the whole process of being obliterated wouldn't take this long though.

"He's coming to." Rorschach tried opening his eyes, but all he could see were indistinct blurs.

The man sounded like Dr. Manhattan, but there was something different in his voice, an inflection, a feeling. He sounded relieved. He then heard another voice.

"Oh, good."

He felt his hand ball into a fist. He didn't expect Veidt to be relieved that he was alive. He wondered what they were going to do.

He tried sitting up, but he collapsed.

"Take it easy there, kiddo, you've been through a lot today." The man who was obviously not Dr. Manhattan was supporting him as he tried to set Rorschach back down on the floor. He looked about middle aged, with wisps of grey on the sides of his dark hair, and thick, square glasses. "By the way, my name's Jon. Jon Osterman."

Rorschach didn't know how to exactly respond to that, so he didn't. Jon kept rambling.

"I didn't honestly think this would work, but we did it! The folks at NASA said it wasn't possible, but boy, they're going to be kicking themselves once they find out…"

"Give it time, Jon. We still need to wait a little longer."

Jon looked up from his reverie. He stiffened. "Oh, of course Adrian." He turned to Rorschach. "This is Adrian Veidt. Have you heard of him in your dimension?"

Other dimensions? Surprised, he gave a curt nod.

Jon smiled. "That's interesting. Well, we're only going to keep you a few days, and then you can go home."

"In the mean time," interrupted Adrian, "You'll receive a complimentary, all-expenses paid stay at Veidt Towers for the time being."

Rorschach tried getting up again. His knees still felt weak, and his stomach was still churning, but he was fine. "Would rather not."

Adrian gave him a contemptuous smile, full of arrogance, Rorschach thought.

"I insist."

He flipped a switch on the wall, and a yellow wire flew out one of the sockets, hitting him in the arm. He barely missed an attack by the electrically charged clamps. It buzzed with fury. Veidt had already pulled the alarm, the doors were beginning to seal themselves as the sirens blared and the red lights flashed. Rorschach quickly pushed over a bookshelf, and used it as a ladder to reach the window on the ceiling, dodging the barrage of electric wires from both sides of the walls. He smashed through the glass, and was almost done unhinging the window.

Until a wire from the ceiling bit him in the shoulder.

Rorschach did not like waking up after getting knocked out. He disliked it even more now that the first thing he had been seeing twice in a row when he woke up was the smiling face of Jon Osterman.

"Good, you're awake. I have a few questions to ask you."

"Explain first."

"How you got here? Well, as you might have guessed, you're in another dimension. There's been a great deal of speculation whether or not such things even exist, but I guess we know now. Anyway, I've been working for years on this new type of particle accelerator, and it has so much potential, but there was the risk of it creating a black hole, or worse. Honestly I had no idea what it would do once we got it up and running. No one really wanted to risk it, except Adrian. When I told him that opening into other dimensions was a possibility, he jumped right on the project. He wants to see whether or not a practicing utopia can exist."

"Can't."

Jon shrugged. "I figured as much."

He still asked some questions about the other dimension anyway. Rorschach was of no help.

Rorschach fidgeted on the purple divan. He hated being here, wherever that was, in some horribly overdone purple nightmare of a hotel room. He couldn't even recognise whether he was in New York from his view.

Rorschach had already found two of the cameras in his room. He left them where they were; he was going to leave soon anyway.

Jon hated the silence. He coughed. He thought maybe they'd have a good starting spot if they had something to talk about. He turned on the television.

The thirty-four inch plasma screen was much too bright for the dim room, and the noise was much too loud. Jon flipped through the channels. They all had different programs, but they mostly were about sex and violence. Nothing new. He finally lowered his arm and set the remote down on the purple wingchair. The woman was brash, in a tight navy blazer. She wore far too much rouge, and her eyebrows were pencilled unevenly.

"In other news, President Veidt and First Lady Laurie Veidt are headed off to Moscow to sign the World Powers Pact, thereby completing a new alliance, known as Pangaea."

"Pangaea?"

"It's some sort of pact the nations have signed to end the war. Granted, some people are opposed to the pact, but after the alien attacks a few years back and the destruction of the UN, I don't think anyone really has the heart to go against it."

So Veidt thought he won. Rorschach was not going to let those people die in vain, not this time.

He looked at the image of Veidt kissing Miss Jupiter. Their faces engorged in the close-up.

"Laurie Veidt?"

Jon was still gazing at the television, in a trance. "What? Oh, she used to be the official veterinarian for Baubastis, though she was much too qualified for the job. She had a degree in marine biology, and she majored in genetics.

"Cover up?"

"I thought so to, at first, but apparently they really are in love. They've dated for a while."

That wasn't what he meant, but he might as well go with it if it distracted him.

"Met through crime fighting?"

"I don't think Laurie was one of them." That didn't really make sense.

"Was Silk Spectre in other dimension," Rorschach revealed.

"Really?" Jon turned to him, interested. "We only had one Silk Spectre in this dimension, and that was a while back." He smiled fondly, " I used to have the biggest crush on her. But, that was before I met Janey."

He took out an old leather wallet. The sides were worn. He eagerly flipped open the side to show a picture. There was Jon, in slacks and a blue polo shirt, and there was a woman in a dress and a blazer with broad shoulders. She had wrinkles on her forehead which makeup failed to cover, and a strained smile. Beside her were two unremarkable teenagers, a boy and a girl.

"Those are my kids, Marty and Kate." Rorschach didn't say anything.

Jon was beginning to feel uncomfortable again with the silence and the scrutiny. The constantly judging, violently crashing blots on the white mask bothered him. He cleared his throat.

"I guess I'll see you tomorrow then." The man made no response as Jon turned off the television, swiped his identification card on the dock, and left out of the steel doors. His shoe rat-a-tapped on a floor that Rorschach assumed was linoleum, and he sat on the divan until he heard the sound retreat into silence.

"Got a new case open up for you." Commissioner Dalton handed him the file.

"A new case? I'm already so close to wrapping up the Nite-Owl case. Couldn't you give this one to Morel?"

"You said you were close to wrapping up the Nite-Owl case five years ago. Give it up Kovacs, you gave it a good run, but you have other issues to deal with. Can't let you give it up anyway, this one was given by Adrian Veidt himself."

Walter furrowed his brows. "Veidt? What would he want with me?"

"You're one of the best, Kovacs. Of course he'd want you for the job." Dalton must be getting desperate.

He flipped through the file. "He escaped the Tower."

Dalton grinned, "So you've got your work cut out for you, you've been through worse."

"No name, no known records, nothing."

"You're just going to have to track down and baby-sit some crazy in a mask. And bring him back to us when you're done."

"Can't your men handle him?"

"Listen here, Kovacs. I'd take the job. It'd be good for you. Don't look at me like that, Walter. Odds are he's going to pay well too. Weren't you and Mildred planning on sending Patty to that school of hers?"

He gave a noncommittal grunt.

"Alright, when do I start?"


End file.
